Immigration, gender inequality, and gun violence are all addressed in The Rock Eaters, a 2021 collection of short stories by University of Houston professor and author Brenda Peynado. As part of the Murray State Department of English and Philosophy's Reading Series, Peynado will give a public reading of her work, which was listed as one of NPR's and the New York Public Libraries' Best Books of 2021. Daniel Hurt speaks with the author ahead of the free, public event on Monday, March 11.
Peynado's work explores what it means to cross borders and break down walls, both personally and politically. She tells Hurt that her work is rooted in her Latina heritage as a first-generation American. "My parents both came from the Dominican Republic. I spent a lot of time in my youth going back and forth for the summers. A lot of the stories focus on that and girlhood. There are a lot of immigrants and first-generation characters. So, there are characters dealing with xenophobia in their own lives," Peynado says. "Often, it's not necessarily the topic of the story, but it's in the background and the subtle things that people say to characters, things that I've experienced in my own life. It's just how life is."
Some political commentary takes a more intergalactic approach. Using sci-fi extraterrestrial arrivals as a metaphor for the global migrant crisis, particularly in the United States, Peynado's characters react with hostility to things they don't understand despite having the same hopes and dreams as the aliens they fear. "It's a thought experiment of what would happen if aliens crash-landed on our planet, and they couldn't communicate with us at first," she explains. "We would probably end up defending ourselves to the death, regardless of what we thought their intentions might be. There's that fear that comes when somebody who doesn't look like us, recognizes us, somebody we don't know, dreams our same dreams. We react against that so often."
Peynado also touches on the ongoing political crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. She tells Hurt the story "Radioactive" is about immigrant children who receive superpowers after an incident with a radioactive truck in Venezuela, which ends with a storming of the U.S. Southern border. Peynado explains the short story "asks the question, 'What if these kids got superpowers from a radioactive truck in Venezuela?' These people get radioactive superpowers, and they end up thinking about immigration and what it means to be a Latin American descendant and have all the consequences of the NAFTA agreement."
"In the end, they storm the U.S. border in a science fictional, cartoonish way. When they reach the border, it's not about accusations so much as it is about reconciliation," Peynado continues. "When they are coming from the border, they are facing off against snipers at the top of the border wall. They're thinking, 'We dream the same dreams.' They're trying to reach the guards. One of the kids has a superpower where they can dream dreams and insert them into people's sleep. She's thinking, 'Let's dream the same dreams together.'"
In another story, families perform oblations to cattlelike angels who live on their roofs, believing their “thoughts and prayers” will protect them from the world’s violence. Peynado also addresses the issue of gun violence in a story called “Thoughts and Prayers,” a common phrase used in the aftermath of disasters to console or be empathetic. Her work asks questions about what the phrase means. The story was inspired by her first teaching job as an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Florida, where she taught students who were at the Parkland High School shooting on February 14, 2018.
"It was also around the time that Hurricane Maria ended up devastating Puerto Rico," Peynado recalls. "These things were tragedies that were mulling around in my mind. I was trying to make sense of all of it. In the end, it didn't make sense. My mom is Catholic, and she was talking to me about prayer. She prayed really hard that the hurricane would turn away from Florida, where we all lived. It did, but it ended up hitting Puerto Rico. What my mom said to me was, 'My prayers have been answered. It's turned away.' And I said, 'Well, Mom, but what does it mean for your prayers to be answered when the consequences were that an entire island was just devastated?'"
"What turned out was the story 'Thoughts and Prayers,' where there were angels that people were praying to and trying to make sense of the violence that kept happening all around them. Then, a school shooting comes to town, and they're trying to make sense of that as well," Peynado says. "These two girls and one of their mothers are trying to protect them from harm, but that protection, that love — or what comes in the guise of love — can sometimes turn out very violent because we don't know what to do." Peynado says the short story explores the familiar trope of a "good guy with a gun" and what the average person might do to defend themselves in the face of imminent violence.
Peynado's unique blend of science fiction, fantasy, fabulism, and magical realism reflects our flawed world and the terrifying yet wonderful nature of humanity. Murray State University hosts Peynado on Monday, March 11, at 7:30 pm in Faculty Hall, room 208, on Murray State's main campus. The presentation is free and open to the public.
For more information on Brenda Peynado, visit her website.
